Hargreaves Lansdown reveals telephone indy advice costs

Hargreaves Lansdown has revealed the cost of its telephone-based independent advice service with clients charged 1 per cent of assets for initial advice and 0.5 cent if they want ongoing advice.

Hargreaves revealed in April it was looking at reducing the minimum investment required to access its advice services from £50,000 to £20,000 through telephone-based advice.

The firm says it expects many customers who use the service to pay the 1 per cent charge as a one-off before moving onto its non-advised proposition.

The service, which has eight telephone-based staff, soft-launched a few weeks ago before the formal launch this month.

Customers who want ongoing advice will pay a 0.5 per cent charge or a minimum of £495. The charges are the same as clients receiving face-to-face advice.

Clients with complex needs are charged 2 per cent of their first £200,000, 1 per cent on assets between £200,000 and £1m and 0.5 on assets over £1m.

Hargreaves head of advice Danny Cox says: “This service is aimed at clients looking to go DIY and who maybe want a helping hand along the way. They have perhaps been disenchanted from their bank or financial adviser.”

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21st February 20183:09 pm

Comments

There are 11 comments at the moment, we would love to hear your opinion too.

Hargreaves head of “non advice or a bit of a chat on the phone” Danny Cox said “We are the lads, other advisers are not from public schools, you know, so they won’t know about finacy thingy’s will they ”

So what they are saying, is that they are going to give full financial advice without the need to provide any written recommendation, and for the same client to complete the transaction on an execution only basis.

Surely the regulator needs to act on this as soon as possible as the courts have already ruled that if a client perceives that they have received advice, then it is not a non advised sale.

I really wish I could remember the court case, but there was a court case last year with a Nationwide client, maybe Money Marketing would like to research this.

It’s ok for the regulator to say if it looks like advice, feels like advice then it’s advice, but it clearly needs to give stronger guidelines if a major player like Hargreaves Landsdown is going to flout advice rules like this.

I wonder how many of the telephone operators will be fully qualified with SPS certificates?

Hargreaves Lansdown either don’t understand how the FCA view these sort of practices or they know something (or someone that most other IFAs don’). Or “head of advice Danny Cox” has not explained the service at all well, because I don’t think that most IFAs could get away with providing something like this to the public.

This really is becoming farcial.
Another MM article recently highlighted how daft this distinction between non regulated and regulated advice has become. Are HL really suggesting they intend to charge a client a fee for “advice” but then let them implement it themselves on their own platform on a non-advised basis??? I presume that if their “advice” bit doesnt included implemention, then it doesnt matter if they breach independent rules by “suggesting” to clients that they can implement with themselves?
This is such a mess that it can only have been misexplained or misreported, or the regulations are simply not fit for purpose…surely?
Clarification please HL/MM/FCA??

1. so someone with 20k needing ongoing pays £495 per annum or 2.47%?
2. Do you really think HL would put this to press if they hadnt discussed with FCA? Please give them some credit as look at what they have achieved.

The costs aren’t the interesting bit of this article. As “Pigs ear” suggests, it is the advice process that is interesting.

So the service is being aimed at “clients looking to go DIY and who maybe want a helping hand along the way”. Is it advice or is it DIY? When does one start and one end? If you ask the client afterwards, will they understand what has been advice and what hasn’t?

They’re not questions for me to answer, but I’d be interested to know.

And they both class it as “advice” I would suspect the FCA has given HL their full blessing, its all a bit of a farce really
A bit like the FCA they are accountable when it suits them and un-accountable when it doesn’t

What they are saying is this works for people who want advice to set everything up but will not need specific ongoing advice every year, something which many clients allege they don’t receive from other advisers who they pay ‘trail’ commission to.